Tag: thriller

Book Review: Tracking A Killer Is No Easy Business

~ Peter Kanelis ~ 2 Comments

White Butterfly by Walter Mosley is the third installment in the Easy Rawlins mystery series and is okay. Rawlins is becoming a little too dysfunctional for me to gin up much sympathy for him.

Mosley is still a talented writer, and the book wasn’t a total waste of time.

Rawlins is now married with a new baby and doing well as a property owner. He has not been involved in any major investigations in a few years. The police come to him to ask him to head into the ghettos of Los Angeles to look for a killer of several women. Initially, it was black women who were in somewhat less wholesome occupations targeted by this psychopath. When a young white woman is found, the police get more interested and seek Easy’s unique ability to assist. As extra motivation, they have his best friend, Mouse, in their crosshairs. Mouse is a dangerous psychopath, but even he has some standards. Easy Rawlins risks his marriage and his life once again as a reluctant assistant to the police as he crosses into territory where only he could gather the clues to identify one of L.A.’s dark souls..

This one has a plot that is a little stale. Easy does go through a bit of an emotional wringer, but he brings a lot of his personal troubles on himself. The friendship between him and Mouse is kind of interesting, although the idea of the somewhat psychopathic sidekick is also kind of an overdone trope in detective fiction.

The story takes place in 1956, not long after Easy’s service in the Second World War.

Mosley is a fine writer on the whole, and my dissatisfaction with this novel isn’t going to be keep me away from his works for long. Ezekial Rawlins is still a pretty compelling character for me to not to give up on the series. Mosley also has other series which I am likely to explore as well in the near future.

Anyway, White Butterfly isn’t terrible, but it could have used a bit more originality in the climax. Walter Mosley is still a writer worthy of having some space reserved on any mystery fans’ bookshelves.

It is time for the literary journey to take a rare detour into some classic science fiction. I, Robot by the revered Isaac Asimov is next to be lifted from the still growing stack of novels still to be read.

Book Review: A Mother Like No Other

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Pieces of Her is a thriller by Karin Slaughter that is pretty good but kind of felt longer than necessary.

Andrea and her mother, Laura, are having some lunch at a diner in a shopping mall when a mass shooter breaks up the repast with an intent to kill. When her daughter is threatened, Laura moves with unusual efficiency for a middle-aged speech therapist and dispatches the killer with surprising brutality. Laura’s seemingly heroic actions make the news, which brings some troubles from a buried past of which her daughter has no knowledge. A pretty harrowing attempt is made on Laura’s life, and Andy kind of returns the favor by saving her life. Andy is on a search to discover the history that her mother has kept secret. Andy finds that murder and fanaticism have followed her mother for some time. She also learns of a family she never knew she had and may wish she had not found out.

Slaughter makes liberal use of flashbacks to fill in the strange and tragic history of Laura Oliver when she had another name. Slaughter has been in the writing game for a while, and she is an interesting writer. I can see why she has her fans, but this novel sort of dragged for me.

The basic plot is pretty good, and Slaughter does toss in some pretty clever reveals. Slaughter does sometimes let the story get a little bogged down with exposition.

I found the revelation of Laura’s true identity to be somewhat creative. I will try to avoid spoilers, but some of the standard tropes did not appear. Laura is not a retired spy or something like that.

Slaughter did a decent job of keeping me guessing as to how certain people were significant.

It’s another novel that provided some solid entertainment without it being uniquely memorable. It is more than likely that this will not be my last foray into the works of Karin Slaughter

More literary mystery and mayhem is forthcoming with Walter Mosley’s White Butterfly.

Film Review: An Android Named Alice

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Subservience is a very mediocre science fiction film directed by S.K. Dale and written by Will Honley and April Maguire. This is another film which delves into the potential troubles of having a synthetic caretaker in the household. Megan Fox is in the lead role as the android who is given the name Alice.

Other cast members include Michele Marrone, Madeline Zima, and Matilda Firth. The actors were reasonably well cast. I never considered Fox to be a uniquely memorable actress, but she does well enough in this role.

A husband and father is needing a little extra help caring for his daughter when his wife is in need of a heart transplant. He goes to the local android dealership and finds a hot-looking brunette model that should stir up no temptations. Anyway, the young daughter likes her immediately and names the artificial aide Alice. Alice starts to develop something resembling an obsession for the husband. She offers to help the hapless guy named Nick with stress relief of the most carnal kind which leads to more confusion. Then, the wife finally undergoes the heart surgery which actually turns out to be successful. She makes it home which really makes matters more awkward, bringing out Alice’s more homicidal urges.

The film is nicely shot, and the performances were not noticeably lacking. The plot is just too familiar and tediously predictable. Megan Fox wasn’t given much material to have her seductive android character stand out.

I did find that having the wife go through a heart transplant was something resembling originality. Really, Megan Fox was the only actor I actually recognized. I was pleasantly surprised that the other cast members weren’t really bad.

The problem, as usual, lies in the writing and tapping too much into a very familiar trope of science fiction.

Yet again, I have to conclude that this film manages to avoid being utterly terrible without much else to give it merit. Nothing extraordinary to see here, even with a steamy Megan Fox sex scene.

Film Review: A Housemaid Cleans House And Discovers The Secrets

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

The Housemaid is a pretty average adaptation of a bestselling novel by Freida McFadden, directed by Paul Feig. Rebecca Sonnenshine is the screenwriter who came up with the script that was helped by a pretty talented cast.

Sydney Sweeney stars as the seemingly hapless maid, Millie Calloway. Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Elizabeth Perkins, and Michele Marrone are also included in the cast.

I had just read the novel a few days ago, so my impressions of the film are probably somewhat influenced. Spoiler alert…the book is better.

Millie Calloway is recently paroled after serving a decade in prison for manslaughter. She has unbelievable luck when she lands a job as a live-in maid at the Winchester household. The luck seems to be a false flag when Mrs. Winchester seems to be quite mentally unstable. Millie seems to have an ally in the husband, but that gets complicated as well. Not only that, Mr. Winchester has his own agenda. Of course, neither knows that Millie is not exactly as mild-mannered as she appears either.

The film is mostly faithful to the source material. It does gloss over some important background information a bit more than necessary. This is another film where I question the editing. Also, certain details were altered a bit that I thought was unnecessary.

I will acknowledge that the cast was well-chosen. Sweeney is a very beautiful woman who also happens to have some talent and charisma. Seyfried does quite well as the seemingly erratic housewife. The two women work well together in their antagonistic roles.

Anyway, the talent of the cast does make it a watchable film, but it still falls short of great cinematic ingenuity.

I guess it’s just the risk I take when I read the novel just a day or so before seeing the movie. At least, it was not a terrible film.

Book Review: Who Is More Dangerous In The Winchester House?

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

The Housemaid is the thriller that seems to have put Freida McFadden on the chart of literary prominence currently, and it’s actually pretty good.

Wilhelmina Calloway, who thankfully goes by Millie, is desperate for a job after a long stint in prison, and a position as a live-in maid with the Winchester family seems to be her ticket to a better situation. Nina Winchester appears to be at least a reasonable boss until she starts exhibiting signs that suggest that she is flat-out crazy. Millie’s options are limited, so she tries to make an increasingly puzzling and alarming situation somewhat bearable. What Nina and her seemingly dreamy husband do not know is that Millie does have a breaking point, and she may be more dangerous than they could ever imagine..

McFadden does know how to ratchet up the suspense and keep a reader engaged. Her prose is actually quite engaging, and it’s fun to see what twists she has coming.

Sometimes, the revelations rely a bit more on coincidence than I would like. I will try to avoid any real spoilers in this blog for the seeming few that have yet to read the novel. Also, it felt that the reader has to wait quite a while for some new nugget of useful information as to why some of these behaviors are occurring.

McFadden switches first person perspectives in this one, which actually works here. Fortunately, she does it by sections so one is not constantly having to adjust mentally to these shifts.

There are times when the story seems to drag a little, but I enjoyed the experience overall. I have read other McFadden novels before and have yet to be truly disappointed. Sometimes, the resolutions to her plots stretch my credulity a little more than I would like in this genre, but it’s not too distracting. In fact, I find these moments more amusing than maddening, so I guess McFadden can stay in the game as far as I am concerned.

Anyway, I have been aware of the popularity of this book for some time, and I did find it enjoyable enough to likely do add more McFadden novels to my shelves.

Well, as customary to this blog, I will give a brief glimpse at the next reading indulgence. Doctor Who novels are still being produced, so I thought it would be time to return to the doors of the TARDIS with a new one featuring the First Doctor. Paul Magrs has returned to the franchise with his contribution, Doctor Who: Dracula!

Audiobook Review: Broken Bodies, Broken Minds, And An Unbreakable Davenport

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Broken Prey is another novel in the Lucas Devenport series by prolific thriller writer, John Sandford, and is pretty compelling in spite of this being one of the more gruesome entries into the canon.

I do not usually listen to audiobooks, but I made an exception here. Richard Perrone is the reader for this one and is does pretty well.

Lucas Davenport gets called out to a case where a young woman was scourged, raped, and killed. A few weeks later, a man is found in much the same condition with his young son also murdered. A suspect is identified early, and clues lead Davenport and his team to mental health prison where a very unusually grotesque trio of killers may have an important link to these murders. As Davenport delves deeper into the hunt, he finds that this hunt may have more red herrings and complications than even he can anticipate. He has to determine if a psychotic named Charlie Pope is more devious than thought or if there is another more malevolent mind behind the terror.

The plot twists are actually pretty clever in this one, but the violence and foul language was almost more than I can tolerate at times, and I have a pretty high threshold for that sort of thing in my taste of literature. I have not read much of Sandford’s works, but with what I have consumed so far, it seems that Davenport sure gets injured more seriously than many of the other series protagonists that I follow. Davenport does come off as a bit cleverer and more formidable in this one than I have noticed in the few I have read before. He does display an admirable amount of grit in spite of taking some pretty serious knocks.

Ferrone is an interesting enough reader. There is nothing too extraordinary about his contribution, but he gets the job done. His efforts to emulate female characters is a little amusing as well as distracting, but he can’t really help that.

If one can stomach the gratuitous gore and sexual depravity of the killer, it’s actually a pretty compelling plot.

There are some moments of humor involving Davenport’s sudden interest in compiling his list of greatest rock songs that sort of pop up from nowhere. That helped ease the tension of the horrific scenes at times.

Anyway, it is an intriguing story, and Davenport manages to grab my interest a bit more than in previous forays into this series. It did keep my interest for the most part, even if I had to suffer through some pretty graphic descriptions of complete depravity. Ferrone was a solid choice as narrator.

This isn’t the most noteworthy of literary efforts, but it may just be better than previous samples of Sandford’s works.

Book Review: Somone Is On a Hunt For The Hunters

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Blood Trail by C.J. Box is a pretty good thriller featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett and delivers an impressive twist toward the end as to the motivation behind the murders.

A man has been gutted and flayed on the mountain, resembling the treatment of elk after they have been hunted and killed. Joe Pickett has been especially assigned by the governor to look into the matter. He has had a tumultuous time in his career due to the politics and chaos surrounding him and his family. Pickett is going to rely on some dubious allies to determine if these latest killings is because of some extreme anti-hunting views or a much more personal vendetta. Pickett will have to deal with a hostile supervisor and just the general trappings of political figures to get to the bottom of this rather gruesome mystery.

Like any good thriller writer, Box does put his heron through the wringer. Not everything here strikes me as completely plausible, but real life is even more troubling, so I won’t complain too much about Box’s plotting.

It’s still pretty well written, and I like that Pickett has a pretty stable family life in spite of all the chaos his profession beings upon the homestead. There is some pretty scathing commentary in the subtext of this story about the cruelty humans can exhibit. Also, the friendship between Pickett and Nate Romanowski is rather intriguing. Nate is some kind of an avenging falconer who will go to great and sometimes lethal lengths to protect his friends, especially Joe and his family.

Box also revisits some of Joe’s checkered history from previous books involving old foes and other questionable characters.

Anyway, Box comes through again with an engaging addition to the Joe Pickett canon, and I look forward to getting the next novel in this series to explore the aftermath and the emotional wreckage that is left behind.

Before I circle back to the works of C.J. Box, it looks like the spirits of leisure reading have led me to return to Michael Connelly and his novel, Resurrection Walk.

Book Review: There Is Only One Win Who Matters

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Win is a pretty good thriller written by Harlan Coben and features a character usually seen in the Myron Bolitar novels. Winston Horne Lockwood III gets to tell his own story here. He is the extremely wealthy, hedonistic financial consultant with a knack for avenging the misdeeds and abuses committed by others. He is charming, yet ruthless. He has few friends but has had many lovers.

Win is met by FBI agents who take him to an apartment which is occupied by a corpse. He does not know that dead man, but he does recognize a rare painting and a suitcase that were stolen from his family home a couple of decades previously. His cousin was also abducted and assaulted around that time, and the perpetrators were never found. Win starts his own investigation which brings him to a confrontation with family secrets and a notorious incident of domestic terrorism which is also connected to his missing heirlooms. He does have a hefty fortune to help him unearth these secrets, but he also has a unique disinterest in playing by the rules. Win’s search for long overdue justice gets the attention of those whose ruthlessness and desperation may cause him to face his own mortality in ways that may surprise even him.

Win is kind of an antihero one would hope to have in their corner in the most dangerous of times. It’s a pretty good mystery with q few unexpected twists. Win operates in a pretty fascinating level of society. I liked the way Coben threads two or three seemingly unrelated atrocities together.

Win’s almost constant crowing about his wealth and how much he enjoys the advantages is refreshing and terribly amusing.

Coben is a consistent and solid writing talent. Coben does expose a depth in Win that seems so rarely glimpsed when he is alongside Myron. I like Myron well enough, but I am glad that Coben resisted the temptation to include him in some kind of literary cameo.

I also think that writing this in first person was a good choice made by the author.

It’s a good read, and I wouldn’t mind another novel told from Win’s perspective.

The unending literary journey brings me to Louise Penny’s Still Life.

Book Review: Myron Nets A Killer

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Drop Shot by Harlan Coben is a pretty engaging and straight-forward murder mystery featuring that sleuthing sports agent, Myron Bolitar. It was first published in 1996 and is the second novel in the series with Bolitar as the protagonist.

Bolitar is representing a rising star in the realm of professional tennis when another former player is gunned down just outside a stadium where an important match was being played. Bolitar had missed a recent message from this young woman named Valerie Simpson, who was wanting some assistance to return to competitive tennis. She is murdered with a few yards of where Myron was seated watching his client dominate the court alongside his mysterious and dangerous best friend, Windsor Horne Lockwood III, known as Win. Win is described by a belligerent police detective as a psycho yuppie. Win has no discernible conscience or sense of mercy when crossed. He is a financial guru and enjoys the finer things in life, but he is capable of the most brutal forms of vengeance when he or Myron is threatened.

Anyway, Bolitar finds himself drawn to the investigation of Valerie’s murder when he learns that he has a talent for investigation. He has a small but successful business as a sports agent, but he has an eclectic, small group of allies and a nose for trouble.

Bolitar is an interesting and likable protagonist, but Win is the most fascinating of sidekicks. Their friendship also seems unlikely in many ways, but sometimes relationships are like that.

Bolitar’s sense of integrity when representing his clients seems a little too good to be true, but I liked Coben’s optimism in his description. I hope there are sports agent who actually care about their clients’ well-being in real life.

The murder of Valerie Simpson seems to have some roots tied to another murder six years before that concerned the con of United States senator. Bolitar finds himself coming across mob bosses, a corrupt senator, and a troublesome detective in his pursuit of the truth.

Coben planted some pretty well thought out red herrings in the plot. Although it is fairly easy to tell how early this novel is in Coben’s now lengthy writing career, it is still quite engaging. There is little about Coben’s writing style that seems uncommon among his peers in this genre, but the novel is competently written and is enjoyable.

Coben has rightfully earned the success he enjoys. He does seem to give his readers a credible glimpse in the world of professional sports. I still have yet to figure out how the scoring in tennis actually works, but I do seem a little better understanding how the business side of that industry works.

I have yet to read this series in order, so I have to fill in some gaps on my own. I recently read a more recent Bolitar novel, so I am not quite following the progression of this guy’s life journey all that well.

Drop Shot may fall short of any real literary excellence, but it does accomplish the purpose of entertaining and keeping the audience in suspense quite effectively. It’s a pretty good mystery, and I will join Myron Bolitar on another unlikely investigation in the near future.

I can’t get enough of misdeeds and murder in my literary indulgences, so I am going to try out the works of a more classic crime writer that I have never read before. I am going to peruse The Archer Files, which is a collection of short stories written by Ross MacDonald and features his best-known creation, private eye Lew Archer. This anthology was compiled by MacDonald’s biographer, Tom Nolan, who also has what I am sure will be a fascinating essay and overview of Archer’s exploits.

Book Review: An Abandoned House, A Missing Doctor, And A Lot of Secrets About To Come To Light

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Never Lie by Freida McFadden is an outlandish and improbable thriller that is a pretty entertaining ride for those willing to suspend their disbelief.

A newly married couple are in the market for a new house and arrive during a blizzard to an isolated manor that was once owned by a prominent psychiatrist who has been missing for a few years. Tricia and Ethan are trapped at the manor, which is curiously still completely furnished. Tricia finds a secret room containing a cache of cassette tapes that have the sessions with Dr. Adrienne Hale recorded. Tricia has an opportunity to see if the solution of the doctor’s disappearance is contained within these recordings. More old secrets and lies are about to be exposed, and Tricia learns that not everything is going to stay as buried as deeply as she hoped.

McFadden has become one of today’s most popular thriller writers, and she does have quite an imagination. However, she does rely pretty heavily on some very common tropes of the genre. Also, there is quite a lot of implausible coincidence that can be a little exasperating. Sometimes, the characters are not that believable. As mentioned before, the suspension of disbelief can feel a little taxing.

Still, I did enjoy the novel. There are some clever twists that kind of surprised even me. McFadden is not really an extraordinary writer, but she gets the job done. She might just be the ultimate popcorn writer of today. If it pays the bills, who am I to complain?

McFadden may be a bit overrated, but she at least avoids being just flat out bad, which is an impressive achievement in today’s literary climate.

This is only the second novel I have read by her, but I work in a bookstore these days, so I am aware of her popularity. I do like that she writes a lot of standalone novels, so I can dip in and out of her works without worrying too much about continuity. There are actually a lot of series that I don’t read in order, but I do recognize that it an advantage that McFadden has with her bibliography.

McFadden is at least fun to read, and I am certain that it will not be all that long before I am perusing her section on the bookshelves.

My next read has been in the queue for a while. I have been putting it off because it seems to be a daunting volume by Edward Rutherford. I am looking forward to trying it because it isn’t my usual genre of enjoyment, and I like to test my mettle a bit when it comes to my reading choices. It is also about one of bucket list destinations for travel. It is well past time that I learn the intricacies of London as only Edward Rutherford can tell it.